The Comrades and the Mullahs: China, Afghanistan and the New Asian Geopolitics: Ananth Krishnan and Stanly Johny, HarperCollins, Gurugram

The conspicuous US withdrawal from Afghanistan has resulted in a political vacuum, garnering immediate attention of regional and great powers alike. In The Comrades and the Mullahs, presenting Afghanistan’s long history of foreign invasions and resistance, journalists Ananth Krishnan and Stanly Johny show how the country was a theatre for the Great Game between the British and Russian Empires, and later got caught in Cold War rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. The return of the Taliban in Afghanistan has certainly become a diplomatic predicament for India. How should New Delhi deal with the new government in Kabul that it chose not to engage in the past? In the shifting sands of geopolitics, Beijing appears not to miss the opportunity of engaging the Taliban government. The book also fittingly highlights an unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, desperately in need of international assistance.